Newgeography: The Luxury City vs. the Middle ClassIf you think you noticed this during the boom times, you were most likely not mistaken. In many cities in the US, the city is reserved as the exclusive province of the unattached - those with no children or grown children - who would merely consume the fabulous bounty of consumable goods and services the city would provide. As middle class families leave cities behind, only the poor and the affluent remain.

Newgeography.com: Euroburbia: A Personal ViewEurope has sprawling suburbs too, despite what romantic urbanists may wish to believe. Social stratification is alive and well for many of the same reasons it is alive and well in America.

October 14, 2010

There is an argument to be found in some internet comments about the gaming market in Reno right now which goes like this: Now is not a good time to build or open new hotels and/or casinos. The reason is that they steal business from existing properties. They make a smaller and shrinking pie divided into smaller pieces percentagewise for everyone.

It’s logical unless you consider something: the effect of competition. The way to grow the size of the pie is to invest. An argument could be made that a more appropriate pie to look at is the pie representing in the total size of investment going in to Reno right now.

One reason why this is a hard argument to make is because there’s another truism in Reno: “gaming is not the future for Reno.” What’s funny is that truism is usually followed up by another one: “we need to attract investment in new industries.”

A good environment for new investment is a good environment for investment – period. It’s an environment where things don’t sit and rot. Imagine that you are the CEO of a company looking to open operations in Reno or an entrepreneur looking to start a new, cutting-edge business there. A good environment for business is a place anybody would be proud to take a business visitor. How do you feel about taking your visitor downtown?

There are plenty of properties right along Virginia Street and within a two-block radius that need some investment. Reno needs to be able to compete not just as a visitor destination for those tourists who are still coming (a market that should still be nurtured) but also for those visitors who are in town with the intent to conduct any legitimate and desirable business. The time for that investment is now.